


Heavy hearted and I feel so cold.

by Ribes



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Drugs and alcohol and all those things in the book, Internalized Homophobia, Longing, M/M, Post Vegas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 16:28:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14288874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ribes/pseuds/Ribes
Summary: It wasn’t only Boris’ breath hitting his skin, although that was a big portion of the whole painting – it was also swinging in the park with their feet almost touching the ground, too high to count the hours passing, and Boris’ voice filling the air with a bittersweet coat, counting all the stars’ names in Polish (wilk, koziorożec, łabędź, wąż). It was tears punctuating the floor beneath his knees and Boris’ hands pressed on his shoulders, shaking him right and left,don’t leave me now, Potter, stay focused, look at me in the eyes, breathe,  I’m right here.Theo's been in New York for three years -- and he doesn't want to, but he can't stop thinking about Boris.





	Heavy hearted and I feel so cold.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in The Goldfinch fandom and surely won't be the last -- I'm already working on something else and I've got a year and a half to wait, so guys, gotta start producing content, right?  
> I don't... exactly know what this is. Theo being gay and sad, mostly. A flow of conscience and a lot of flashbacks. I think there's a gap between 15-year-old Theo and 26-year-old Theo that needed to be filled, at least a little bit. So yes... here it is. Please let me know if you liked it, and again, sorry if my english isn't perfect, if you find wrong sentences feel free to correct me!

_Heavy hearted and I feel so cold_  
_The nights are longer than I’ve ever known_  
_Wherever you are, come and get me now_  
 

   


Right after dinner, when the sign on the shop door read ‘closed’ and no more clients wandered around with curious fingers and ringing pockets, and the dishes and glasses were piled up on the left side of the otherwise empty table, Hobie used to make two cups of coffee. Theo knew very well the old man would never come into his room – there was some sort of unspoken rule that left each other a fair range of personal space – so he waited, sitting on his bed, trying to lit up one of the flattened cigarettes he kept under his pillow: after one, two, three attempts, the fire sparkling but never actually gripping it, his nose started to feel the scent of coffee grains. It was a pleasant thing to smell – his mother never let him drink coffee, said it only made him more hyperactive, and in Las Vegas he didn’t have the time and will to prepare it by himself, not when there was always a bottle of alcohol at hand. So his brain automatically connected coffee to Hobie: to Hobie and the order his house was kept in, and the dim evening light, the rumor of steps on the stairs to reach the kitchen, his unlit cigarette stuffed in his pocket, ready to be worked on later. They drank the cups in silence, reading in each other’s eyes; while during evening they usually spoke a lot – about the shop, about Theo’s studies, and Hobie’s acquaintances, the people that had stepped in the shop during the day: never about the past, though, that was some sort of taboo – the coffee made them more silent. Just them breathing and the clock ticking its way to 9 pm and the chairs squeaking every time one of them crossed their legs or straightened their backs.  
  
That time, though, for the first time Hobie decided to speak. It was late February; outside the house, the garbage bins and traffic signs kept a pearly white coat of snow on their top; the kitchen looked a little more illuminated because of it, as if the light that came from the dumpsters shone upon their tired eyes. The man was scratching his wrinkles-covered forehead, some unpleasant thought darkening his eyes, and Theo rubbed his fingers against the warm plastic cup. He probably didn’t have an enthusiastic face himself. He was seventeen at the time – pimples happily decorating his cheeks like a hundred horrible flowers, constant bags under his eyes, nibbled nails and a girlfriend he couldn’t get rid of. In part because spending time with her kept him away from drugs – she was a nice, polite girl, only a couple joints in the weekend, never really got drunk, said she believed in God, even if it didn’t make sense – and in part because she wasn’t gonna let him: so many text messages if he ever decided to space apart, once had slapped him after he’d said it would’ve been better if they just stopped seeing each other. _You don’t have anyone else to keep you warm at night,_ she’d reminded him, and it was true. Pippa was lost between Swiss mountains, ginger hair and dimples disappearing in unknown lands – and the boy whose hands held him when the night grew dark in Nevada, hot breath on his skin and blood running in his veins, he was lost too.  
  
«You know I’m your friend, Theo, right?» Hobie said that evening, suddenly raising his eyes to Theo, who looked at him startled. «You don’t have to see a strict father in me. You can talk to me, if you want to. If something troubles you, keeps you up at night, if there’s something you’d like to get off your chest… I’m here.»  
  
Theo had never heard him say such things to him. Not because they weren’t true – yet like a lot of stuff, also those notions were left in the unspoken space between them, and him bringing them out created an awkward atmosphere, one Theo didn’t feel at ease in. He lowered his eyes, stared at the dark beverage in his cup, fingers tapping the surface. «I know.» It sounded more like a question than a sentence. _Is he gonna lecture me about something? Did he find out about the pills?_ If he’d happened to hear things from his girlfriend – from one of his teachers – if he’d somehow come into contact with his dealer, a sophomore who inexplicably was 22 years old – if that sneaky friend of his, Abernathy or something, had convinced him to rummage through his room and open his closet –  
  
«You left a couple paper sheets on the windowsill, this morning before college,» Hobie added, the wrinkles on his face getting thicker. «It shouldn’t be my place to stick my nose in your life, especially your past, but I see you so much tired and silent these days and I – couldn’t help but linger my eyes, just a bit. There were names, and I was wondering… if you want to talk about these people. If it could make you feel better.»  
  
«They’re made up,» Theo said, almost immediately, in a way that sounded quite forced. The words slipped out of his mouth before he was able to stop them. Not that he was really going to. «The names. They’re not true. Just imaginary people I use, to practice my writing. Ideas for college projects. Annotations. Stories, sometimes. They’re –» his left hand pressed itself against the plastic cup with unusual force «– they’re not real, of course.»  
  
For a long moment, Hobie stared at him, eyes perfectly still, as if he was trying to capture the right image inside of him, the one that could reveal every single secret he kept in his brain and deprive him of his own shell, finally visible and fragile. _What are you hiding from me?_ he seemed to be constantly asking, mostly when Theo came home from school – which actually wasn’t school, it was skipping classes with a couple kids to get stoned in abandoned parks, which reminded him of some years before: same feeling of dizziness, vanished feeling of warmth. In the late afternoon he stood next the doorbell, hands thrown in his pockets and reddish eyes staring at the rungs beneath his feet. And Hobie didn’t ask – he never asked anything, quiet in his passionate work, too kind for someone like Theo to rightfully bother his life. And yet he did.  
  
«Of course,» Hobie smiled at last, after a moment of silence. He reached over and put one hand on Theo’s shoulder; it looked like he was about to say something else, but when his mouth opened again the only words were, «you don’t have to drink it all if you feel tired. Go to sleep, it will be good for you.»  
  
Theo felt like he was politely asking him to leave; maybe that impression was true, or maybe he himself needed some space alone. A lot of it, actually. He nodded, smiled – with a certain difficulty, his lips feeling weird as they tried to stretch up – and got up murmuring a muffled ‘thank you’. As he reached the stairs and started to walk to his room, he was certain he heard Hobie sighing.  
   
  
  
There were nights when Boris came to visit him between the sheets. They’d spent time in all corners of Theo’s room, back in Las Vegas – sitting on the floor rolling handmade cigarettes, jumping enthusiastically around singing _Blackbird_ or _Julia_ with off-key bewildered voices, knelt next to the tallboy to pick up clothes that weren’t completely dirty, sweaty or frayed, laying on the blanket watching European (mostly Russian) movies on the old laptop they’d once stolen by chance from the shopping center. Yet the physical presence of him, that was what Theo remembered the most: like fingerprints in his brain, every night spent with another body intertwined to yours was something difficult to remove. His breath’s noise and warmth, his hands on Theo’s belly, first pressing and then deeply softening as his sleep grew deeper. Legs latched together, feet touching; if one of them moved, the other could feel it, adjust himself on the bed. And obviously all the other things that came along with the fact of having that sort of intimacy. In summer they slept with no sheets on, so even if there was a lot more skin uncovered, even if it was still dark, there was this kind of pesky feeling, like someone was watching them with one corner of their lips in a malicious sneer – and it wasn’t really that easy. In winter, though – something happened.  
  
_Dear Boris,_ he’d written only a few days before, right before angrily throwing the paper in the trash bin, because that was a phrasing he could’ve used at most in a British gay movie set in the nineteenth century. _Boris, hey. Hi, Boris. Pavlikovsky, is this you? Did the letter reach the right place?_ Who the fuck even wrote letters anymore? Only posh rich people with a fixed address and a deep hatred for technology. Yet he’d written that letter all the same, because he knew for sure he wasn’t going to send it away, wasn’t even able to. Boris had just disappeared – from his life, from the world – like snow in a day of July.  
  
_It’s not fair, you know. Leaving me with all these thoughts inside, not being here to clear them up, to fucking act like the friend you claimed to be._ Sometimes he caught himself hoping that Boris would’ve come ringing the doorbell, black hair longer than they were last time he’d seen him, way taller, wearing a leather jacket and a pair of ripped jeans, asking to see him, coming to get him. _Get me? Where do you want to take me?,_ he would’ve asked, with an annoyed, curt voice, stepping back into the house, refusing to following him. And Boris would’ve just rolled his eyes – _don’t be a pussy, Potter. Is so much in the world you need to see. You have a vague idea of how many things I saw while you were here twiddling your thumbs? Alaska, Mexico, Norway. Italy and Spain. Even Japan, once. Got my name written in Japanese on my back, you want to see it?_  
  
His back. That was the kind of triggering memory Theo had been trying his best not to wake up: an explosion of feelings, of related thoughts that kept him awake five hours straight. Boris tossing his shirt away when the weather was hot enough to walk around with only trousers and sunglasses on, the undeveloped muscles softly springing under his skin, Theo sitting on the ground and absently staring with his mind elsewhere. He had a birthmark, right under his neck, dark like his hair. Vanilla and strawberry scars walking on the left side. Skin as white as the snow that right now he could see hanging on the lamppost outside his window. In summer, there were a lot of freckles all around, and a lot of burns, too, ‘cause none of them had had the brilliant idea to grab sun cream somewhere.  
  
That evening, when he reached his room after the awkward talk with Hobie that happily hadn’t lasted more than five minutes, first thing he did was sitting on his bed and lighting the cigarette up. He was so upset about the whole situation that it worked on the first attempt, fingers angrily hitting the lighter, and soon the room was filled with the intense, relaxing smell of smoke. He leaned against the wall in silence, a contorted frown on his face.  
  
_Don’t you remember what the plan was, Boris? You were supposed to follow me after a pair of days. Sell as many pills and coke as you wanted, try to kill your father one last time, dump that Kotku-something, then jump on the first taxi in the morning and look for me in New York. Hobie would’ve hosted you, you know. He still would. And if not, we could still run away on our own, hide in the subway, eat food from vending machines, gain money in whatever way we come up with. Maybe all the drugs could earn us so much cash we could even rent a dirty old apartment in the outskirts – I could work in a café shop and you, I don’t know, cleaning up fucking clubs or something. Just like a fucking comedy set in the 90s. Or we could live by stealing and sniffing and getting drunk, that would be fine by me too._  
  
He felt guilty by thinking that. It wasn’t fair – Hobie had been doing so much for him those years, cooking for him, leaving him a bed to sleep in, and radiators when he felt cold and coffee in the evening to warm him up. Plus the fact that, living in that precise home, he got the chance to see Pippa at least twice a year: and that made him infinitely happy, perhaps the brightest moments in those three-hundred-and-sixty-five days. There wouldn’t have been any Pippa if he and Boris had left together for New York: only snobbish women with overflowing purses to swipe from, stoned girls with poured make-up to have sex with in dark corners, and him, of course. And that simple detail sounded convincing enough.  
  
What if Hobie _had_ let Boris stay at his house instead? What if Theo had spent the last two years in the same place, except with Boris by his side? That was a thought that sometimes lingered in his head and made him uncomfortable, because it sounded so close to what his everyday life was – so _tangible_ he could almost touch it – that it became hurtful. It was a universe one could lose themselves in: Boris wearing big squared long-sleeved shirts across the house, hair pulled into a short ponytail because even now he wasn’t going to cut it and it fell too irritably on his eyes, naked feet stepping on the wooden floor. Boris giving him a hand in Russian translation – _is so simple this line, why are you this fucking dumb, duràk_ – while browsing through the pages of some nineteenth century novel, pretending to be a snobbish intellectual. Boris always keeping an envelope full of weed in his pocket, calling him in the school parking lot to smoke for half an hour, the sunrays reflecting in his bright eyes.  
  
And they would’ve slept in the same bed, of course, ‘cause Hobie’s house was quite a small one, and they’d done it for almost two years so what was the point in stopping? Usually that was the part where Theo’s daydream stopped being a coherent organism and turned into something far more confused and tangled. He traced the line of his bed’s border, letting a breath out of his mouth. _Shh, Potter, is only me._ Would he wrap his arms around him with the same confidence even if there was a window only half a meter away from them? Would they close its shutters before going to sleep, just in case? Would they even _sleep,_ or just chatter in a low voice about all sort of stuff, school and work and Hobie and girls and places to visit? Would they stifle their laughters in the pillow, eyes meeting between stretched cheeks and raised eyebrows? Would they sing each other to sleep, muttering songs from Radiohead’s _OK Computer?_  
  
Would they be brave enough to _touch_?  
  
An angry noise came from the depth of his throat as his teeth almost hit the cigarette butt. He was not supposed to think about that – that was the thing no one was ever supposed to know about, never even written on the letters he never sent, the taboo topic – if Boris had known he still thought about that he would’ve laughed at him for hours – he would’ve pushed him off the bed with disgust – he would’ve called him a –  
  
_But we did it together._ Damp hands smacking against trembling palms, panting breath on exposed skin, hair all across his face. Drunken laughters, chewed distorted voice. _Take it off, is getting in the way._ Arms sliding between his thighs. _It’s fucking freezing in here, get your hands off me!_ Soft pushes, fingers wrapping around his wrist. _You, a liar, Potter. Want me to be with you._ Confusingly helping him out of his shirt without even realizing it. All that clothing pissing him off, bringing him to let annoyed noises out of his mouth. Laboured noises. Smothered noises. A feeling of warmth spreading across his body, noticing Boris’ contracted muscles even with his glasses far away, somewhere on the floor, their mouths floating dangerously close to each other, at first enough to smell his breath – weed and beer and sweat and chocolate and iron blood – but not enough to actually _touch,_ because that was the code. A code that went broken as soon as his hands slipped between Boris’ legs – not because they intended to, but in the hazed darkness blur their lips collided onto each other like stones abruptly falling during a landslide, hitting the wrong spots, saliva pouring on their cheeks and teeth biting hard enough to taste nothing but blood.  
  
He tried to push those memories away – store them in a locked room inside his mind and toss the key – but his trousers already felt too tight, his breath had already grown too heavy. He put the cigarette out, watching its smoke slowly fading away inside the ashtray, focusing on its curls and shades. _Stop, come on, stop._ He heard Boris laughing somewhere far away, taking his hair off his eyelids, eyes raising in exasperation and disbelief: _such a trùs you are, Potter._ His _voice_ still felt so real, after entire years of absence, and a sudden childish thought made him wish he had recorded it when he had the chance to, so he could listen to it a thousand times: rough tone, strangely melodic when he sang Polish lullabies, often sarcastic, never too serious for a laughter not to break through.  
  
He welcomed his phone suddenly vibrating with a rush of both relief and bother; then shook his head, crossed his legs as firmly as he could and picked it up. There was the notification of an e-mail sent from Pippa three days before – one he still hadn’t answered to, because he needed to choose wisely the few words he was allowed to share with her – and three new messages from his current girlfriend. _I was supposed to go seeing a movie with this friend of mine, but she basically just saw her ex and now I’m in front of the cinema on my own. Do you want to come? We can hang out by my house when it’s finished._  
  
One year after this moment, if someone had asked him the name of the girl in whose throat he stuck his tongue on a daily basis, or the name of the movie she was talking about, he wouldn’t have had the slightest idea. Not even a fragment of memory, only passing flashes, nothing that really influenced his life: maybe she had strawberry blonde hair, perhaps the movie was an European production. What he really would’ve recalled in perfect details – even though he would’ve never admitted it, because that’s how his mind was shaped, burying things and playing quiet – was how quick he was in closing her chatroom and scrolling through the cellphone numbers registered in his contacts list, looking for Boris’ telephone.  
  
Which absolutely didn’t make sense, because it had been shut down months before. He remembered casually clicking on it the previous spring, the only response being a registered voice informing him the number he was trying to reach wasn’t in service anymore; and he remembered actually feeling a slight wave of serenity, because that spared him all the stuttering and the awkwardness and the silences that inevitably came when you contacted someone whose last touch had been a kiss on your lips.  
  
_Boris._  
  
As he entered the message, a red exclamation mark appeared on its left side. The text was obviously unsent.  
  
_I’m waiting for you to come pick me up._  
  
_It’s fucking boring in here. School is only huge books and monotonous conversations._  
  
_The only good moments are when I get high and when it snows._  
  
_Can you believe it, Boris? Snow. It never snowed in Vegas. It never even got cold enough for us to wear long sleeved shirts. You wouldn’t expect snow to fall in a fucking desert anyways, so. Jokes on me._  
  
_I wonder if it’s snowing where you are as well. If you’re in Vegas, it surely isn’t. You should try coming here. Wear some gloves and a red communist scarf you’ll find somewhere in your room._  
  
_Well obviously you’ve got stuff for cold weather, you’re a damn Russian. Polish. Czechish. Australian. Stuff._  
  
_Reason number one for you to visit me: I’m a fucking disaster in Russian translation. The teacher is hot, but this won’t change the fact she wants to strangle me by now. I’m all up for people talking in Russian while having sex, but I’d like not to get killed after, thanks._  
  
He realized he’d spelled the whole sentence morally wrong. _Duràk_. Here it was, that overwhelming wave of disgust towards himself – that knot in the stomach that flipped his guts over, stabbing his depths with poisoned daggers. He couldn’t understand why his brain had to play such games, connecting knots to those wasted nights filled with half-muttered words that probably weren’t even Russian, didn’t have any meaning except for the one he decided to give them. He would think about it in class, munching the back of his pencil with self-blame rooting in his stomach, eyes flickering towards Boris who usually read a book under the desk and only paid attention if they were at Spirsetkaja’s lessons – he took his notes very carefully and enthusiastically then, hair falling on his face so that Theo couldn’t see his eyelashes. He watched his right hand holding the pen and flew back to six, seven hours before, where hands and hair and ruffled sheets were all he could see, and the wave of electricity he involuntarily felt in those moments only made him more ashamed of himself.  
  
«You heard what Spirsetskaja said about Hawthorne? Thinks we’re not mature enough to read him. _Yerùnda_. I can understand _The Scarlet Letter_ better than she can, wanna bet?»  
  
«Boris, honestly, I wasn’t even listening.»  
  
«Too stoned to pay attention in class, huh? Can relate to that.»  
  
«We only smoked half a joint this morning!»  
  
Yet he eventually agreed to that interpretation of his distraction, because he was never going to admit he’d spent the entire lesson staring in the void because he was thinking about _him_. And slowly, weirdly enough, spending time with Boris caused the memories to float away; by lunch they were throwing food at each other sitting on the sidewalk, mayonnaise pouring down his cheek and him hitting Boris on the head while insulting him, and everything flew back to normal. They pulled a couple cigarettes out their trousers and smoked while waiting for the bus, shoulders sometimes slightly touching, Boris always gesturing with his left hand and making Theo laugh, throw his eyes at the clear sky in exasperation. At home, sometimes they tried to study sitting on the kitchen table, but mostly gave up after fifteen minutes; they brought cigs and vodka upstairs and jumped on the mattress. It was books and movies and singing along at _Rolling Stones_ and laughing until their head fell on the floor with a blunt noise.  
  
When Theo, now three years later, thought of Boris, a whole universe of facts and words flew inside him. It wasn’t only Boris’ breath hitting his skin, although that was a big portion of the whole painting – it was also swinging in the park with their feet almost touching the ground, too high to count the hours passing, and Boris’ voice filling the air with a bittersweet coat, counting all the stars’ names in Polish ( _wilk, koziorożec, łabędź, wąż_ ). It was the two of them throwing up in the bushes and pulling each other’s hair out of their faces, falling down next to each other on the arid grass once their entire stomachs had been turned upside down. It was an entire vocabulary of Russian words Theo only partially remembered, and how bright red Boris’ communist flag looked when they laid on the smoke-filled bedroom floor. It was tears punctuating the floor beneath his knees and Boris’ hands pressed on his shoulders, shaking him right and left, _don’t leave me now, Potter, stay focused, look at me in the eyes, breathe, I’m right here._  
  
Every time he tried to articulate into words the enormous amount of thoughts he had about Boris – to define them into a concrete term, put limits onto them and feel less confused, less terrified – his mind placed a stone block right in front of him. Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t ever tell anything to Boris in the first place, the reason why there was such an unspoken entity between, one they could almost touch physically, strong as it was. Never ever talked about what they felt, yet their eyes met many times, communicating things in the dim lamppost light or in the darkness of Theo’s bedroom. Hands and legs and tongues, sometimes, saying everything their minds and throats weren’t able to burst out. And that kind of mechanism had worked for so long that seeing it broken – first with the entrance of Kotku in both their lives, much to Theo’s displeasure, then with their definitive separation years before – made Theo feel only kind of empty.  
  
«I just wish I didn’t miss you so much,» he whispered out loud, and that was the extreme border, the final line, the one he was never supposed to cross – so he didn’t. He stared at the lonely chatroom for a while, heat and guilty excitement leaving his body to be replaced by a melancholic feeling of nostalgia. Nowhere to be found, nowhere to be seen again – he was just gone, that part of his life so far behind him only amphetamine and bitter alcohol had stayed.  
  
_See you at the cinema in half an hour_ , he wrote to his girlfriend the very next minute.  
  
Flowing back to normal. At least for an evening.  



End file.
